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Blooming Soul

For this piece I used a whole stack of vintage textbooks... I tried to show the base skin tones and highlights by pieces of pages from the physical sciences, the foundations of education. The next layer is appliqued bits from biology textbooks and illustrations from the life sciences. The only paint used was to make the tribal pattern covering her face, representing the humanities. Her hair was made from the cover of a "National Geographic" textbook. Then the origami flowers in her hair are made from music scores. I like the idea of representing the whole wide world, and the great equality that comes with access to education. Hidden within her face is the text lifted from one of the books (from 1939), "The contract of scientific humanism is the recognition that the sufficient basis for rational cooperation between citizens is scientific investigation of the common needs of mankind, a scientific inventory of resources available for satisfying them, and a realistic survey of how modern social institutions contribute to or mitigate against the use of such resources for the satisfaction of fundamental human needs. The new social contract demands a new orientation of educational values and new qualifications for civic responsibility." This piece was made specifically for the charity show coming up October 4th at UCLA for Revo LA. 100% of the sale of this piece is going to help elementary schools in Papua New Guinea. If you have a suggestion for a title, please email me at eisimmons@gmail.com, or just leave your response here. I will send a personal "thank you" gift to whomever comes up with the best title! Thanks! 20 by 20 inch canvas, 2009.

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Uploaded on Sep 21, 2009

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